Portal:Weather

The weather portal

Weather refers to the state of the Earth's atmosphere at a specific place and time, typically described in terms of temperature, humidity, cloud cover, and stability. On Earth, most weather phenomena occur in the lowest layer of the planet's atmosphere, the troposphere, just below the stratosphere. Weather refers to day-to-day temperature, precipitation, and other atmospheric conditions, whereas climate is the term for the averaging of atmospheric conditions over longer periods of time. When used without qualification, "weather" is generally understood to mean the weather of Earth.

Weather is driven by air pressure, temperature, and moisture differences between one place and another. These differences can occur due to the Sun's angle at any particular spot, which varies with latitude. The strong temperature contrast between polar and tropical air gives rise to the largest scale atmospheric circulations: the Hadley cell, the Ferrel cell, the polar cell, and the jet stream. Weather systems in the middle latitudes, such as extratropical cyclones, are caused by instabilities of the jet streamflow. Because Earth's axis is tilted relative to its orbital plane (called the ecliptic), sunlight is incident at different angles at different times of the year. On Earth's surface, temperatures usually range ±40 °C (−40 °F to 104 °F) annually. Over thousands of years, changes in Earth's orbit can affect the amount and distribution of solar energy received by Earth, thus influencing long-term climate and global climate change.

Surface temperature differences in turn cause pressure differences. Higher altitudes are cooler than lower altitudes, as most atmospheric heating is due to contact with the Earth's surface while radiative losses to space are mostly constant. Weather forecasting is the application of science and technology to predict the state of the atmosphere for a future time and a given location. Earth's weather system is a chaotic system; as a result, small changes to one part of the system can grow to have large effects on the system as a whole. Human attempts to control the weather have occurred throughout history, and there is evidence that human activities such as agriculture and industry have modified weather patterns.

Studying how the weather works on other planets has been helpful in understanding how weather works on Earth. A famous landmark in the Solar System, Jupiter's Great Red Spot, is an anticyclonic storm known to have existed for at least 300 years. However, the weather is not limited to planetary bodies. A star's corona is constantly being lost to space, creating what is essentially a very thin atmosphere throughout the Solar System. The movement of mass ejected from the Sun is known as the solar wind. (Full article...)

Refresh with new selections below (purge)

edit

Selected article

Hurricane Vince was an unusual hurricane which developed in the northeastern Atlantic basin. Forming in October during the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, the waters over which it developed were considered too cold for tropical development. Vince was the 20th named tropical cyclone and 12th hurricane of the extremely active season. Vince developed from a non-tropical system on October 8, becoming a subtropical storm southeast of the Azores. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) did not officially name the storm until the next day, shortly before Vince became a hurricane. The storm weakened at sea and, on October 11, made landfall on the Iberian Peninsula as a tropical depression. Vince was the first tropical system to do so since the 1842 Spain hurricane. It dissipated over Spain, bringing much needed rain to the region, and its remnants passed into the Mediterranean Sea...

Recently selected articles: Weather, Cyclogenesis, More...

More selected articles

Did you know (auto-generated) - show different entries

... that the apricot dress of Jacqueline Kennedy kept its shape in India's hot weather?
... that in the 1980s, "Sherman Bonner, The Human Thermometer" presented the weather on an Arkansas TV station?
... that after Irish post office clerk Maureen Flavin Sweeney reported worsening weather conditions, Dwight D. Eisenhower agreed to postpone D-Day by 24 hours?
... that an attempted British-Norwegian attack on the German battleship Tirpitz was abandoned after two Chariot manned torpedoes were lost due to bad weather?
... that Japanese actor Kouhei Higuchi prepared for his role on the television drama adaptation of My Personal Weatherman by learning from a weather forecaster?
... that Come In was recorded on a hands-free microphone attached to a pair of headphones?

edit

Selected image

A Von Kármán vortex street is a repeating pattern of swirling vortices caused by the unsteady separation of flow over blunt bodies. They are named after the engineer and fluid dynamicist, Theodore von Kármán. These vortices can appear on a large scale in nature when unidirectional boundary layer wind flows around isolated hills or islands, and can be visible from space if a layer of clouds are present. In this satellite picture of one of the Juan Fernández Islands, the wind at cloud level is moving from lower left to upper right, and the island is in the clear area at the lower left.

Recently selected pictures:

Crepuscular rays,

Cumulonimbus cloud,

Ice storm leaves, More...

More selected pictures

edit

More did you know...

...that the Flying river is the name given to the transport of water vapor from the Amazon rainforest to southern Brazil?

...that hurricane shutters are required for all homes in Florida unless impact-resistant glass is used?

...that the Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research is a combined weather and ocean research institute with the cooperation of the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and the University of Hawaiʻi?

...that the SS Central America was sunk by a hurricane while carrying more than 30,000 pounds (13,600 kg) of gold, contributing to the Panic of 1857?

...that a hurricane force wind warning is issued by the United States National Weather Service for storms that are not tropical cyclones but are expected to produce hurricane-force winds (65 knots (75 mph; 120 km/h) or higher)?

...that the Automated Tropical Cyclone Forecasting System is a software package for tropical cyclone forecasting developed in 1988 that is still used today by meteorologists in various branches of the US Government?

Archive of previous DYK...

edit

Recent and ongoing weather

edit

This week in weather history...

November 11

2013: A tropical cyclone made landfall in eastern Somalia, killing 140 people. The storm was one of only five storms in recorded history to strike the country, and by far the deadliest.

November 12

1961: Hurricane Tara struck the Mexican state of Guerrero, killing as many as 500 people.

November 13

1972: A major extratropical cyclone known as Cyclone Quimburga struck northern and central Europe, causing severe damage and wind gusts as high as 245 kilometres per hour (152 mph).

November 14

2013: Tropical Storm Podul made landfall in southern Vietnam, bringing up to 973 millimetres (38.3 in) of rain to the Quảng Ngãi Province, and causing major flooding that killed 42 people.

November 15: Start of the South-West Indian Ocean cyclone season

2006: Hurricane Sergio, the strongest Pacific hurricane on record in the month of November, reached its peak intensity, with maximum sustained winds of 110 miles per hour (180 km/h).

November 16

1937: A plane attempting to land in bad weather near Ostend, Belgium, hit the chimney of a factory and crashed, killing several members of the Belgian royal family, including a baby born during the flight.

November 17

2013: An outbreak of 72 tornadoes killed 8 people and caused more than $1 billion in damage in the Midwestern United States.

See a new, random set • Other days in history...

edit

Selected biography

Clement Lindley Wragge (18 September 1852 – 10 December 1922) was a meteorologist born in Stourbridge, Worcestershire, England, but moved to Oakamoor, Staffordshire as a child. He set up the Wragge Museum in Stafford following a trip around the world. He was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and in 1879 was elected Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society in London. To the end of his life, he was interested in theosophy and spiritualism. In 1908, during a tour of India, he met with Mirza Ghulam Ahmad of Qadian, the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement in Islam who had claimed to be the Mahdi, the messianic redeemer awaited by Muslims. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle sought him out in New Zealand to ask for his views on spiritualism before writing The Wanderings of a Spiritualist in 1921. After training in law, Wragge became a meteorologist, his accomplishments in the field including winning the Scottish Meteorological Society's Gold Medal and years later starting the trend of using people's names for cyclones. He travelled widely, giving lectures in London and India, and in his later years was an authority on Australia, India and the Pacific Islands. (Full article...)

Previously selected biographies: Robert Case, Wladimir Köppen, More...

More selected biographies

Related portals

edit

Quality content

Featured articles

Featured lists

More weather-related Featured Lists...

Featured pictures

Hurricane Katrina's eye

Low pressure area

Dust storm

Hurricane Katrina's eye

1900 Galveston Hurricane

Featured topics

Featured candidates update

Feat. article candidates:

Tropical Storm Ileana (2018) (Discussion)

Featured list candidates:

Feat. picture candidates:

Other candidates:

Featured Article Review: 2005 Atlantic hurricane season (Discussion)
Featured List Removal Candidate: List of storms in the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season (Discussion)

Good articles

More weather-related Good Articles...

edit

Subcategories

Category puzzle

Select [►] to view subcategories

edit

WikiProjects

The scope of WikiProject Weather is to have a single location for all weather-related articles on Wikipedia.

WikiProject Meteorology is a collaborative effort by dozens of Wikipedians to improve the quality of meteorology- and weather-related articles. If you would like to help, visit the project talk page, and see what needs doing.

WikiProject Severe weather is a similar project specific to articles about severe weather. Their talk page is located here.

WikiProject Tropical cyclones is a daughter project of WikiProject meteorology. The dozens of semi-active members and several full-time members focus on improving Wikipedia's coverage of tropical cyclones.

WikiProject Non-tropical storms is a collaborative project to improve articles related to winter storms, wind storms, and extratropical cyclones.

Wikipedia is a fully collaborative effort by volunteers. So if you see something you think you can improve, be bold and get to editing! We appreciate any help you can provide!